Elijah Newton:I cry pardon if I'm off base with this comment, but did anyone else find the irony of the picture associated with this article distracting? The faceless woman is wearing an outfit which, unless I'm mistaken, is pretty much an icon of Chinese fashion. This seems in questionable taste for an article about the New Face of Japanese Games that takes games to task for not being precise about the appearance of their characters.

*shrug* Maybe it's just me.

Ah good catch, I think you're right, it looks like a cheongsam to me. (I suppose the affinity for red should be a bit of a give way too.)

Gift.

Yea I don't know who put that up there but it unfortunately keeps me from taking the article seriously. A search "japanese dress" gives a kimono and "chinese dress" is qipao.

Many japanese games to me have japanese characters. Superficially they don't look like it but personalities and character motivations are very culturally relative.

Just to let you guys know, Japan did nothing wrong during WWII. Especially between 1937-1945. Nothing wrong at all. No Korean sex slaves or anything. Nope. They're just victims of evil imperial America.

Seriously though, this a horrible article. 'None of this proves that anime characters are intended to look white.' Why, because you say so? Oh wait, a bullshit study to add to the denial. Since Japanese talk in layers by saying 'They look Japanese', maybe they're saying they look white but since Japanese aspire to be white they say Japanese since they want to be white. You know?

You ignore obvious things like the abundance of blond haired blue eyed girls. Or the fact that evil characters tend to have narrower eyes and have features that look...Asian.

An article that starts (after the intro) with 19th century history and ends with Frank West can't go wrong.

I feel it didn't study its subject well enough, though. Most of the points are conjectures... anime characters may look Westernized or may look just stylized, what's the truth? Who do you listen to in this dillema?

It's true though that in Japan there's a fetiche of the West, but there's also a level of xenophobia. Maybe the two balance out, and I need to display my confusion over this fact with an emoticon O_o

One interesting point is that it's impossible to create a raceless character, because people will expect characters with dark skin to be shaded even in a colorless medium, so while White and Asian people may see their own race on a character with background-colored skin it's harder for people with darker skin to do the same. Someone needs to do an actual scientific study on that, with labcoats and stuff.

For.I.Am.Mad: Or the fact that evil characters tend to have narrower eyes and have features that look...Asian.

Wide eyes = innocence, duh. The prevalent 'horny old guy' manga archetipe also usually have very narrow eyes, even though they're generally nice. This is because they have no innocence. THEREFORE BY MY POWERS THE REST OF YOUR POST IS ALSO NULL AND VOID, KAZAM

The shift in art style in japanese games from 8 bit era to nowadays answers to several factors:

- Improved technology, being able to portray characters in a more definite way. In the old days you only had to change the game's cover and maybe a couple of the splash screens in game. And that was it. The tiny sprites could be interpreted in any way.Now you have the ability to define a character down to the eyelashes. So there had to be some give and take.

- The gaming market has broadened several times over. The best example of this is Final Fantasy. At the end of the 16bit era, the franchise's offerings were enjoyed by a majority of guidebook wielding hardcore players. Enter the Playstation, with its improved visuals, there also laid the opportunity to take on a larger market, say, the animation crowd. Thus the previos major character designer, Yoshitaka Amano, takes a secondary role to a fresh face who brings about a whole new style of characters, more closely related to their anime counterparts down to the spiky hair. With the advent of realism, came yet another gamble. In japan the lines between cosplaying and street fashion aren't as clearly defined as the rest of the world. The value of japan's fashion sense has been proven time and time again as even western performers have profited on it. Thus the most recent installments Final Fantasy's cast of heroes seem more at home at a Mall than in a Dwarven Hall.

Years back there used to be an Asian guy who did portraits at our mall (I was kid back then so I can't tell you where he was from). After he drew you you would look Asian in the eyes. The eyes just had this slight narrow curved look to them that made you look Asian. I noticed in Tekken 5 that in Bruce's ending his eyes have a very exaggerrated wide eyed look to them. You can tell that the Japanese programmer was trying his hardest to make sure the black guy did not Asian eyes! In FF10-2 howwever in the extra high-res cut scene of Yuna singing 'A 1,000 Words' Yuna's eyes take on a slightly asian look. My point? I don't know. It's too late for me now to think. I guess it's like how guys can draw guys easier than girls and vice-versa.

A great article! I've always prided myself on catching the choice tidbits of Japanese culture that made it's way into various 'Neutral' games, and I really enjoyed many games that worked to immerse you in Japanese culture, past or present (Shenmue anyone?). It is sad to see Japanese developers working harder to produce games designed to target a western audience than just making really good games for everyone. Maybe all of us who are fans of Japanese culture and Japanese games will get a few more Western Ports before the Asian market goes belly-up to the almighty US dollar...or something like that.

I think the appearance of the characters in Japanese games aren't a result of ethnic 'bleaching' so much - at least one would hope that's not the intention. Having characters who are racially ambiguous makes it easier for people of anything ethnicity or cultural background to relate to the character. And it helps each character look different. I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say that some people would have trouble distinguishing between characters if they all had, to quote the article, straight black hair and brown eyes.

Besides, is it typical of most people who fall under the broad umbrella of 'Caucasian' to have hair colours such as purple, or bright orange? It's not necessarily whitewashing, in this respect, because they don't even look all that Caucasian. I don't look at an anime girl with blue hair, and think that she looks white. Sure, their eyes might be unnaturally large, and they might have curly hair, but those things still don't make me automatically assume that they're Caucasian. And as stated in the article, there are reasons behind that - to give the impression that a character is innocent, or naive - little things like that. We get these cues from their expressions and their facial features, and that's what they represent - not race.

And if characters appear 'ethnically neutral' and makes the game more accessible, how is that a bad thing? Games that just so happen to be made by Japanese developers don't have to be about Japan. Look at all the RPGs that are set in fantasy worlds. So now all the characters in this fantasy world should look Japanese just for the sake of it? They did intend for people of other cultures to play it too, right? And if we really wanted a game which was more focused on Japanese culture, there'd be one. And maybe it'd be actually set in Japan, instead of in some world created by Japanese designers.

And whitewashing? Most of the Japanese/Chinese/Korean people I know, especially the girls, are paler than most Caucasians are. There is a whole market out there dedicated to making your skin more pale.

Also, people with no face really creep me out. Reminds me of that Doctor Who episode...ugh.

Seriously though I feel that creating games that focus toward a specific culture is not bad in and of itself. Look at Metal Gear Solid. A Japanese game that had a definitively American character and focused strongly on American government and culture. MGS4, which admittedly had become more global in scale, is now the best selling game on the PS3. It is when you start changing you franchises to appeal to a certain culture or completely ignoring those franchises that you may have a problem.

Gunner 51:Such things are not a new phenomena, Indian cinema been doing something similar with it's lead actors for years. They're certainly a lot lighter in skin tone than most of the normal populace there - which also seems to buy skin whitening cream in droves.

Actually, these two things are related. In many societies, European and Asian, a paler complexion was held up as a mark of health and beauty, basically because it was a sign of class. If you were pale, that meant you didn't have to work outdoors so you were probably wealthy and powerful.

In the West, sometime in the 20th century as the concept of holidays and vacation became more prevalent, an all-over tan started to represent the same thing. If you're tanned all over, it probably means you have the free time and money to lay on a beach in a swimsuit for hours at a time. Being pale means you don't have the time to do this, so you're probably either poor, or working all the time at low-paying jobs. But there's still negative sentiment towards a "farmer's tan", because it's a sign that you do outdoor physical labour. These sentiments exist even though some white people, notably most redheads, can't even get a tan.

I'm not entirely sure why most Asian cultures still hold pale complexions in high regard. They might not see a beach vacation as a worthy leisure activity, but the number of beach episodes in most anime series makes me question that.

I kind of have to laugh, perhaps believing that the grass is greener on the other side is part of the human condition.

Zyxzy:I am not entirely convinced that Dead Rising's success is due to ethnic pandering instead of, you know, the gameplay.

Um, yeah, I'd agree with that. I know that the article was about how race impacts how people perceived race in video games but there are so many other factors involved in this discussion that the author never touches on. Maybe it's just that cultures are too complicated to reasonably expect every aspect of them to delved into in a three page internet article...Too much thinking, I'm off to bed.

My friend always used to complain when characters in anime of manga had blonde hair, but as I pointed out to him many of the blonde Caucasian girls we see aren't real blondes either.

Here in Taiwan, large round eyes and pale skin are both considered to be the ideal. There are different arguments about the round eyes, but the pale skin has nothing to do with race or emulating Westerns and everything to do with socio-economic class. If you had pale skin it meant that your family was rich enough that you didn't have to work outside in the fields. This rings true for most of the countries in East and South East Asia which I have travelled to.

For.I.Am.Mad:Just to let you guys know, Japan did nothing wrong during WWII. Especially between 1937-1945. Nothing wrong at all. No Korean sex slaves or anything. Nope. They're just victims of evil imperial America.

Seriously though, this a horrible article. 'None of this proves that anime characters are intended to look white.' Why, because you say so? Oh wait, a bullshit study to add to the denial. Since Japanese talk in layers by saying 'They look Japanese', maybe they're saying they look white but since Japanese aspire to be white they say Japanese since they want to be white. You know?

You ignore obvious things like the abundance of blond haired blue eyed girls. Or the fact that evil characters tend to have narrower eyes and have features that look...Asian.

Actually you have to go back a little earlier to 1931 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. It was the ongoing civil war in China and Chiang Kai-shek's belief that the Communists were a great threat than the Japanese that prevented full scale for six years.

ilion:Maybe we are just reading too much into this. I mean Japan is a proud nation, always has been, people just like diversity in life.

Japan seems to be more humble and proud, and at times the Japanese people seem almost ashamed of being Japanese. It appears that the Japanese don't like characters in their media to appear ethnically Japanese. Key to the issue, I think, are Japan's first contact with cultures outside of Japan in the form of the foreign barbarians that brought modernity to the country (Meiji era).

And if people liked diversity, particularly, why do most protagonists in first- and third-person action games look the same (buzz-cut space marine stereotype)? Probably the same reason that Japanese characters look like Caucasians: the audience tends to project themselves onto the characters, which is facilitated by the characters conforming to a cultural ideal.

First of all: Final Fantasy characters are ambiguous in race? What game are you talking about?! You're honestly telling me you can't tell Barret and Sazh are not the same race as Yuffie and Snow? Do you really expect me to believe you think all four of them are white? If it was just one, then maybe I'd believe you, but claiming you're that bad at telling race apart makes you sound like Steven Colbert.

Anime looks different than western art because it has a different focus to make characters look distinct than western animation. Western animation can usually have their characters broken down into simple geometric shapes; this can be clearly seen if you take our most cartoony looking characters, for instance: Mickey Mouse's head is three big circles.

Anime on the other hand has standard silhouette or shape to their characters, relying instead on style and expressions to distinguish characters so they don't all look the same. Different clothes, hair style, colors, with exaggerated facial expression. Strip those away and the characters would all look the same. Back when sprites in video games were made up of very few pixels, these stylizing features were the perfect tool for distinguishing between sprites. It has only now become more noticeable as games have improved graphics to allow more detail and flexibility in character design.

However it is true, by not changing the shape of the bone structure of the characters faces, Anime does lack some of the facial features we often associate with race. But this is not an attempt to remove racial features; this philosophy in art can be track down in Asia long before western influence existed. It is also important to remember a lot of Anime characters were never intended to be seen outside of Japan when they were made, so it's a bit self-center if you try to examine this topic through the lens of an American culture, or any other.

A typical Japanese artist does not have to tell people apart on a daily basis using the traits we associate with the groups of people our culture defines as difference races. If a crime occurs in Japan and the officer asks a witness what the assailant looked like, he's probably not going to mention he looked Japanese or Asian. But he certainly be quick to point out the assailant had spiky blonde hair, and had on a blue tank top.

As for why horror games are set in America, the creators have admitted American horror movies having a huge influence on their design. And it shows!

One thing that does bother me about Anime and race is how, to make characters seem less foreign, American Anime characters are introduced as Half-Japanese and Half-American. It doesn't make any sense. You can't be half American, you're always 100% American or not American at all. In fact, you can even be 100% Japanese and 100% American. Using American to define any non-Asian race is silly, as it completely misses the point on what being an American means.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't a lot of the early animations from Japan bear startling resemblance to their Western counterparts because well, that was how the industry started? All artists in all artistic fields begin from mimickery to some extent, and branch out later.

Modern characterisations are for the most part a mix of fantastical over-stylisation and a hefty peppering of raial stereotypes, particularly towards the Chinese (see: sidebar image on the article, most any gameshow on NHK). Annecdotally, the current generation of anime/game hairstyles would look much more normal on a Japanese retired woman than anyone on a beach ANYWHERE (purely a funny aside as the direction of influence there is clearly pop culture outwards).

Any discussion regarding eyes are baffling in their own regard due to the inherant state of dominant and recessive eyelid fold traits in East Asians, and even raising Hamasaki's snip-snip issue without touching on the fact that bifold eyelids are natural in Japan is pretty lax, given the context (although I think Hamasaki, glue or surgery or what-have-you has gone so far she looks decisively alien).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to diss this article, its just that there are a lot of unfinished and unfleshed out threads within it that are then used to push a "balanced" argument. Particularly, in the first two pages you raise as many affirmative points as you do negatives towards the central argument, but these points tend to be mutually exclusive in scope and none are balanced within themselves.

Falseprophet: In most societies, Oriental, Occidental and anywhere in between, intellectuals were prized more than farmers, and guess which one tends to develop a more tanned complexion? Its only pretty recently in human history that a tan has become prized. I don't know enough aboiut the whitening stuff to comment further, but its an curious starting point.

ManInRed: I suspect that is primarily political. Even a recruitment video I once saw for an "internationalised" cult made a point of showing the foreign character going home because he had no Japanese heritage whatsoever.

I always thought they mostly like the western face at least the round eyes that with liking various non black hair colors and fancy styles you get more than the 5-10 combination you get with most Asian looks.

I have noticed more Black/brown hair leads in anime but not many with a Asian eye styles.

I also thought that most of these characters in Japanese games were an actually an expression of desire to be strange and not be bound by things like respecting elders, knowing your place and all in all, almost like some sort of escapism deal with trying to break out of the shame-based society Japan has.That is, the characters in quite a few Japanese games strike me as being loud and all over the place (both in personality and appearance) for the very sake of not being "normal", being "rude, powerful, young, weird and not-caring about it".

I was under the impression that anime characters were designed the way they were to better display emotion and to distinguish character archtypes and personalities. Wide, round eyes typically are indicative of youth, benevolence and/ or innocence and naivite, as seen with the "moe" archtype, while narrower eyes belong to adults and/or the evil and corrupt. There's more to it than that but that's the basic idea.

so im not the only one who noticed this. if you play alot of Japanese games and watch most anime, they all look like westerners mainly americans. it bothers me a little why it looks us and not them. there are a few but the one that bothered me the most are love hina/S-cry-ed and all animes set in japan

If anyone truly believes that the Japanese are trying to look western. I think it's fair to say that such people are being very racially insensitive. Races are not so black and white, and I had thought this to be common sense, but it seems that this isn't the case. I can't express my negative thoughts on this new subject matter for The Escapist, adequately. I know that such issues might be better off being addressed, but I can't help but feel the subject of race and religion in video games, to be too odious to want to bring up. Hmm, well, it's one of those things I guess. Thanks for the article ^~^.

I agree that the look of comic characters is much less to do with emulation of white people. From my experience here in Japan, I would say that the a lot of this apparent "urge" to be white is mostly imagined, through our own Western arrogance. I mean, who wouldn't want to be like us? ;)

Japanese comic characters have large eyes so as to covey character and emotion. They get larger for this pupose. Shrewd and guarded characters lack these large eyes. The eyes of difference races is a coincidental factor, for the most part. Besides, most of these characters' eyes aren't even close to natural colouration. What's Western about blue eyes?

The colourful hair is to show individuality and spirit. Rebellion. Inner strength. Yellow is a colour too, you know. If the West wasn't itself so hung up on blondes, perhaps it too could understand that. There are far more pink and green haired characters around, and last I checked, pink and green were NOT natural colours for white people.

And, it is arguable that a lot of the ipetus for comics in Japan came from artists inspired by Western artists, such as disney, in which the eyes are large and expressive. Either way, the eyes are the "window to the soul". The large swimming and bright eyes of many characters is about expressing that gateway.

It is self importance that leads Westerners to assume that there is some kind of rampant emulation going on. If any, it is indirect, and the ideals being strived for are those which the white people are just lucky enough to already have.

[EDIT] Also, when people strive to "understand" another culture, they often do so by enforcing their own culture's views. This is self defeating. Is it not possible that with the Japanese genepool creating such similar features for all (dark, straight or straightish hair; and so on), that one of the biggest drives for many Japanese today is to DIFFERENTIATE from this. What can they do, except colour and shape their hair and eyes? They could of course become MORE extreme in their natural "look", but that would symbolise further dedication to it. No. It is better to be alien to it. To have not the "blackest and straighest of hair" but the opposite of that, as much as possible. Again, it is the arrogance of the West to assume that other cultures spend all day trying to be like tham.

Ziggy the wolf:so im not the only one who noticed this. if you play alot of Japanese games and watch most anime, they all look like westerners mainly americans. it bothers me a little why it looks us and not them. there are a few but the one that bothered me the most are love hina/S-cry-ed and all animes set in japan

Waif:If anyone truly believes that the Japanese are trying to look western. I think it's fair to say that such people are being very racially insensitive. Races are not so black and white, and I had thought this to be common sense, but it seems that this isn't the case. I can't express my negative thoughts on this new subject matter for The Escapist, adequately. I know that such issues might be better off being addressed, but I can't help but feel the subject of race and religion in video games, to be too odious to want to bring up. Hmm, well, it's one of those things I guess. Thanks for the article ^~^.

The irony somewhat, is that you are basing this entirely on the difference between the characters' looks and your own template for Japanese people should look like. You then compare this to what you believe that white people should look like. You don't allow for any other explanations because you see that emulation is the only reason.

If Japanese comic and animation characters are emulating the Western, white aesthetic, then why are the majority of them in possession of brightly coloured hair and eyes? I certainly don't see such colouration as the natural hallmark of Western geneology. Do you?

The fact is, these characters don't look like any race. They are designed to symbolically convey various attributes and are therefore fantastical in their colours and shapes. In many cases, characters even lose their facial features, becoming just eyes, or a mouth; in order to more succinctly convey emotions.

Pale skin is hardly a correlation either, since the practice can be easily tied to Geisha practices and even further back to White as a colour for purity. Large eyes, I have already explained above, are large to convey feelings. Large eyes are desirable in all cultures, not because they are "WEstern" but because the eyes are the "window to the soul". Coloured hair denotes a character's personality, drive and individual qualities.

Faced with this, how can you be so adamant that these characters are "trying to be Western" when they are so often not at all Western.

Giftmacher:On the subject of skin shades, are we sure even "white" characters are an aspect of westernisation? I'm pretty sure I've seen a fair few older Japanese works of art where the people depicted are quite pale. So for all we know this could be a long running cultural aesthetic. There must be more research, that you haven't mentioned, on this sort of art history...

Gift.

Exactly. When I see people saying that white skin is "Western", it says more about those people's own narrow vision. I live in Japan and I have come to appreciate how diverse the Japanese can be in their appearance, WITHOUT agumentation. There are pale people and their are very dark people. It's funny that the Western view appears to be that, Westerners are allowed diversity at no charge, but Japanese must look and act a certain way, or be accused of being Whitey Fanboys.

There is indeed a long running aesthetic for pale skin. It isn't that hard to find with Google.

I cry pardon if I'm off base with this comment, but did anyone else find the irony of the picture associated with this article distracting? The faceless woman is wearing an outfit which, unless I'm mistaken, is pretty much an icon of Chinese fashion. This seems in questionable taste for an article about the New Face of Japanese Games that takes games to task for not being precise about the appearance of their characters.

*shrug* Maybe it's just me.

Maybe there is some detail you caught that makes this a Chinese outfit rather than a Japanese one, but it looks like a kimono to me...

I cry pardon if I'm off base with this comment, but did anyone else find the irony of the picture associated with this article distracting? The faceless woman is wearing an outfit which, unless I'm mistaken, is pretty much an icon of Chinese fashion. This seems in questionable taste for an article about the New Face of Japanese Games that takes games to task for not being precise about the appearance of their characters.

*shrug* Maybe it's just me.

Maybe there is some detail you caught that makes this a Chinese outfit rather than a Japanese one, but it looks like a kimono to me...

No, it's not Japanese traditional wear. It looks closer to Chinese, though I wouldn't be able to say for sure, EXCEPT that it's not Japanese.

But perhaps that "mistake" isn't so huge if we take the intent of the article to show Japan's outward looking cultural metamorphosis. However, we could just put it down to the author not knowing how to use Google well enough.

Gunner 51:Such things are not a new phenomena, Indian cinema been doing something similar with it's lead actors for years. They're certainly a lot lighter in skin tone than most of the normal populace there - which also seems to buy skin whitening cream in droves.

Actually, these two things are related. In many societies, European and Asian, a paler complexion was held up as a mark of health and beauty, basically because it was a sign of class. If you were pale, that meant you didn't have to work outdoors so you were probably wealthy and powerful.

In the West, sometime in the 20th century as the concept of holidays and vacation became more prevalent, an all-over tan started to represent the same thing. If you're tanned all over, it probably means you have the free time and money to lay on a beach in a swimsuit for hours at a time. Being pale means you don't have the time to do this, so you're probably either poor, or working all the time at low-paying jobs. But there's still negative sentiment towards a "farmer's tan", because it's a sign that you do outdoor physical labour. These sentiments exist even though some white people, notably most redheads, can't even get a tan.

I'm not entirely sure why most Asian cultures still hold pale complexions in high regard. They might not see a beach vacation as a worthy leisure activity, but the number of beach episodes in most anime series makes me question that.

You rock sir (or madam). It is great to see that people are still willing to look deeper than what is apparent on the surface. Your opinion shows quite readily that the "Whitey fanboy" explanation for how many anime and comic characters look in Japan, is certainly a weak one, and quite simplistic in scope. It seems people are so obsessed by race that they can't see much else, even when it is incredibly logical.

Come now, your all making a big deal over nothing, inserting a problem where none exists. In what way is the simple business strategy of catering to your customers a bad thing? If the Japanese people don't like games that reference their own culture, is that anyone's fault but their own? I believe that one should always take pride in their homeland and heritage, which I assumed the Japanese did more than most. I do enjoy a fair share of anime and JPRG's (the SMT and persona games mostly) and I don't mind at all that they're sunk up to their chin's in Japanese culture. I expect my Japanese games to be Japanese and my Western games to be Western. I will admit that if more Japanese games get to be more Western, it will feel like a bit of a letdown (see previous sentence), but if that truly is where they're headed I will reassess and change my viewpoints accordingly and try to judge the games on their own merits.

That said, there's not a damn thing wrong with neutral, fantasy settings.